My Baby is Born...Here's a Preview!

First of all, to all of you who pre-ordered Kid Rex and have called/emailed/facebooked (is that a verb?) me to tell me that you've gotten it and are reading it, thank you so much! For people who haven't bought it yet, or who aren't sure whether this "topical" memoir may not pertain to them, let me say that I only wrote this book because I believe it represents a universal, human struggle for self-knowledge and identity that we all go through at some point or another. To prove my point, here are a few of my favorite passages from Kid Rex...

From Chapter 8: The Big Black Dog

If I had never taken this simple respite I would have missed that gorgeous autumnal scene. I wondered what else I had missed, and what other scenes I would have missed if I continued on the way I was. If I were as brilliant as Einstein I would create my own theory of relativity. It would have been the relativity of color. It would speak of how, in the same span of months, a sick girl could go from dying in the solitude of a gray of winter to living a life of color in a thin border of trees along a small stretch of road somewhere between New York and Boston. It would explain big black dogs in our minds, rather than big black holes in our universe, and it would prove the existence of second chances brought to our awareness in a sudden burst of sunlight flashing for a moment through the sweet thicket of maple trees...

From Chapter 10: Venice Again, for the First Time

On our second day we stopped for lunch at a well-hidden cafe' where only locals dared to tread. Over cappuccinos and snacks the four of us sat, joking about nothing and everything. We laughed harder than we had in years, and it felt foreign to laugh instead of cry into our perfectly brewed coffee and thick froth. The laughter was exaggerated, almost harsh. It took up every neuron, used every corner of our brains, so we didn't stop and realize that we hadn't laughed that way together in years. Sitting in the basement-like Venetian hideout, surrounded by rough fishermen and middle-aged, dark-haired waitresses, I felt another Laura emerge. She was wearing a bright, turquoise velvet skirt that contrasted with the dark, rough teak of the bench that it rested on...